Peter Chianca: Literary theme park hurts like the Dickens

Monday

Aug 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2010 at 4:10 PM

I remember in the ninth grade, when I was reading “Great Expectations” and trying to figure out exactly why Mrs. Haversham had been sitting there in her wedding dress for 20 years, there was one thing I wasn’t thinking — namely, “This would make a great interactive thrill ride!” But what did I know? I also predicted a great future for Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

Peter Chianca/Best of Chianca

I remember in the ninth grade, when I was reading “Great Expectations” and trying to figure out exactly why Mrs. Haversham had been sitting there in her wedding dress for 20 years, there was one thing I wasn’t thinking — namely, “This would make a great interactive thrill ride!” But what did I know? I also predicted a great future for Dexy’s Midnight Runners.

Luckily, there was someone who apparently did see that Charles Dickens could equal family fun, which is why today England is getting ready to debut Dickens World, a $115 million theme park based on the author’s work. Meaning if you’re depressed about the impending death of literature, you can forget your troubles by going over to Dickens World and kicking a street urchin.

As you might imagine, this idea has had some divisive results. In one camp are the people who say Dickens was nothing if not a populist, and if he were alive today he probably would have come up with the idea on his own, in between writing movies about naked showgirls and getting his picture taken for bags of Oliver Twisties. Then there are the purists, who think Dickens should be enjoyed in the traditional fashion, namely, by putting his books on a shelf in your study and leaving them there until you die.

Personally, I come down somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, anything that might get even a few young people excited about literature has to be a good thing. So rather than trying to get them to read all 528 pages of “A Tale of Two Cities,” you could instead bring them to Dickens World, where presumably they’d be able to see an animatronic French revolutionary get guillotined right in front of them. As anyone who’s seen what happened to Count Dooku in “Star Wars: Episode III” can tell you, this type of thing is very appealing to the under-8 set.

On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder where this could lead. “Steinbeck World,” where people are piled into Model Ts and caked with fake dust? “Hemingway Island,” featuring the interactive Old Man and the Sea boating adventure and bullfights on the half-hour? “Faulkner Village,” where the tour guides go on forever without using punctuation? Actually, to an English major none of those sound too bad.

Besides, in the end, aren’t parents just looking for some sort of diverting activity to occupy their children? It doesn’t matter if that activity has its roots in classic fairy tales, beloved TV and movie characters or tortured literary figures who are pushed into their own open grave by a vengeful spirit. What matters is whether or not these places have cotton candy and — ideally — a mist tent.

Look at the classic example of Disney World. Why do we traipse our families down there at great personal expense? Well, yes, because the Disney company has brainwashed our children, much in the same way I suspect they indenture their Disney Channel actors and make them live in the studio in crates.

But I guess the concern is that, while we go to Disney World expecting that they’ll push their movies and merchandise on us — in fact, it’s part of the fun to come back with Mickey bathroom accessories that at home you would literally run away from, possibly screaming — somehow literature is expected to have aspirations beyond mere commerciality. In fact, real literature is never considered truly successful unless nobody beyond a smattering of college professors even knows that it exists. I think Danielle Steel said that.

So when you look at it that way, maybe the Dickens theme park isn’t a bad idea after all — there are worse things than dragging literature kicking and screaming out of the under-funded libraries of the world. Who knows? It could actually get kids curious about Dickens’ books, and once they’re curious, you know what they might do next.

No, not read them, but they might be interested in the video game. Anyone for a round of “Grand Theft Barouche”?

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. He is on vacation this week; this “Best of Chianca” column is from 2007. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.